


Heartbreaker

by Manaya_Karyam



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2560427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manaya_Karyam/pseuds/Manaya_Karyam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After making a contract to save her life, Ginny finds out that having two kinds of magic can be even more trouble than one! On top of that, having a real romantic relationship is harder than it looks... can Ginny pull her life together before it all pulls her apart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> If you have custom styles disabled, this might get hard to understand later on.

**Trigger Warning: suicide**

* * *

_"That makes sense. Kazumi's magical attribute is destruction, and Niko's is reformation. It fits the hot-and-icy requirements."_

\-- Juubey

 

_"The key to victory... is fried ice cream!"_

\-- Niko Kanna

* * *

      She was panicking, blood spinning through her veins like tiny racing brooms, but she was tired, so tired that her eyes didn't even dart around wildly. Somehow she felt there wouldn't be much to see. Initially, there would be a giant stone chamber, wet and dark like a sewer, and shortly afterward there would be nothing. She was panicking, but it was like an afterthought; like she just knew she  _should_  be panicking.

     Ginny's eyelids were mostly down. She was lying uncomfortably, bent in the small of the back like an L, but moving was the furthest thing from her mind. Her attention was on the ephemeral stream of energy, or life-force, or something, sliding through the space between her and her diary - which, of course, was really Tom's diary, and always had been. She had trusted Tom way, way too much, and when you reach out there's a chance that a person will just keep  _taking_  and you won't realize until you have nothing left, and it was unfair, she thought, that life had met her with such a test when she was too young to have known that very important lesson.

     She must have known it in a sense, though, because she had never trusted Harry Potter. She trusted him to be a  _good person_ , of course - that was kind of his whole thing. That was some of what made him so amazing. What she did not trust him to do was like her back. So, maybe her past self wasn't so foolish after all.

     Ginny was dying in the Chamber of Secrets, and she could feel her mind leaving her body. Her intake of sensory information was lessening, like her nerves were dying or shutting off. She focused her attention on her face, where she could still feel the air and even her breath, and found that something was pressing against it insistently.

     It was a paw. Hitting her in the cheek. A cat? She didn't want to open her eyes. She was too tired.

     The paw smacked her ear and pushed at her nose. She pulled her eyes open.

     It wasn't a cat.

* * *

_"Are you telling me that in order to save yourself from one creepy, suspicious, magical being, you made a deal with a second creepy, suspicious, magical being?"_

\-- Arthur Weasley

 

_"Don't worry, Dad! I could see where this one's brain was!"_

\-- Ginny Weasley


	2. Rule Number 1: You gotta have fun.

     A binary switch. 0 to 1, Off to On. She didn't know how she could do it, but she could, just like moving her muscles. And when she made the switch, everything other than her faded away.

     Gravity vanished. Ginny floated loose from the weight of herself. She was air. She was space. She was light. Oh - she was naked. Her clothes had gone along with the beds, walls, floor that surrounded her. The only object that remained was her tiny, smooth soul gem that now hovered a few inches in front of her chest.

     No longer in the dorm room, she was somewhere that was missing its shapes, with its color splashing out of bounds. It was exactly as orange as her gem, and her hair, which was swirling out behind her like when she submerged herself in water. She flung out her arms and legs, and twisted and spun around, feeling free and clean and perfect, which, in this space where no human was and no human would ever be, she was. She was all that she needed to be.

     Next, the power arrived, finding its shape and filling it in, to appear in a pop from what seemed like nothing. Black charcoal and orange flames whipped around her in the form of a fabric like leather that covered her hands, arms, made a jump and stretched over her breasts and upper back. At the same time it raced up her legs (which had received platform shoes with faces etched on the front) and flowed outward at her waist in a longish pleated grey skirt that flared as if she was spinning and then swished down to hang around her thighs. Her hair, which had been floating haphazardly, coalesced into a high and smooth ponytail and a black band snapped around the base to secure it. And now there were hot lines tracing across the edges of her top, writing designs and decoration, and these lines were also circling around her eyes and then down onto her cheeks in a spiral and a sharp curve, leaving black marks that seemed to be eyeliner, but of a type that shimmered with an internal glow as her soul gem set itself into them, becoming part of her face.

     Ginny reappeared in the world in a runner's crouch with wand in hand. The mass of the Earth instantly pulled down at her and her clothing, and miraculously, it was all totally comfortable. She sprang to her feet, letting her hair whip like a tail.

     "Hiyayaya!" she yelled. Then she flushed with embarrassment, because it turned out that catchphrases made up on the spur of the moment end up sounding really dumb.

     She'd transformed standing in front of a mirror. Now that mirror grabbed her attention like a Seeker grabs a Snitch. The girl in it seemed not of this planet, or not of this reality. The colors were so bright they almost glowed, and the lines of the outfit blended with her body's and made her shape seem exact and intentional. She was like an art piece, and yet not in the sense of staying motionless in a museum to be stared at by sophisticated people. She was art that moved, that had life even while still, and whose eyes and eye-markings glowed with internal power. Also, she was  _super cute._  


     She jumped and effortlessly touched the ceiling. She was pretty sure she couldn't have done that before. She giggled and said "cool" at the same time, which would have sounded pretty silly if anyone was around but nobody was which was lucky because she did not want to share this yet. Just what could she now  _do?_  The instinctive response was "anything". She had energy, and she knew she could control it. She wanted to move. She tried to run around with her new magical athleticism, but there wasn't room in the dormitory. She did push-ups, which were deliciously easy, but got boring fast. She played with her soul gem: at a thought, she could have the glow fade from her eye markings and the gem fold into being, balanced on her flat palm. Then she could have it move back - forth and back, forth and back, forth and back. It was such a simple trick (in fact, probably something every third year witch could do without even making a contract), and yet it filled her with a large and strange giddiness, as though it was the most visceral proof of her power. It was a new toy. She loved it.

     Lying half on her bed with her feet on the floor, she summoned the soul gem to her hand and accidentally dropped it on her face, discovering that in her new state she could, in fact, feel pain. She touched her stinging cheek. In the moment of subdued excitement, a thought swam up to greet her, one that intrigued her but scared her. She realized she'd kind of been wasting time in order to avoid it. This new form was that of a warrior; in other words, it had weapons.

     Ginny got to her feet and took out her wand. She looked at it, feeling a little dumb; that catlike creature hadn't taught her any incantations. Perhaps it would show up to do that shortly. But in the meantime...

     She gave her wand a little wave, feeling self-conscious. She reminded herself there was no one here. She made a great slash with the wandtip.

     Nothing was changed, other than some air particles' locations. Remembering that no magic was ever really done  _just_  with wand movement, she closed her eyes and looked inside of herself and found or maybe imagined a reserve of power. And it probably was just imagination, but as she moved her wand again this time, she imagined that the power was brought out and she sort of  _pushed_  it through her body and out of her wand and -

     - there was a splashing noise.

     Ginny opened her eyes. "Oh, heck," she said.

     Somebody's bed seemed to be drenched in sparkling apple cider.

* * *

     It was all remarkably parallel, when you stopped to think about it.

     Harry Potter, in the end of his first year, had entered a forbidden area of the school and faced off against Lord Voldemort, emerging successful.

     Ginny Weasley, in the end of her first year, had entered a secret area of the school and faced off against Tom Riddle, emerging successful. At least, that was the story Dumbledore had invented - that she had bravely confronted him in the Chamber, and that by embodying the ideals of Gryffindor in this way had summoned Fawks and the ancient Sword to her aid, and thus prevailed. So, it was a lot more parallel if you knew the lie, not the truth... but still.

     The truth - along with relevant vocabulary - was this: Ginny had been approached by  **Ruby.**  Ruby the catlike thing had offered her a  **contract.**  The contract had turned Ginny into a  **double witch.**  As a double witch, she had a duty to fight  **demons.**  And in addition, she had been granted one  **wish.**  


     She had yet to fight any demons. Presumably, Ruby would call on her when the time was right. For now, she had new powers to experiment with - and this was true in more than one way, because now she was famous.

     It was unnerving, to begin with. So many people knowing her name when she didn't know theirs. Picking up her name in a conversation across the room. The girls in her dorm room seemed to have both a greater desire to know her and a greater status gap preventing them from doing so, which made her start to wonder just how "real" status gaps even were. She found herself becoming increasingly aware of what people thought of her (maybe just because more people thought of her at all), and there were definitely patterns that emerged. People picked up on parallelism; brains sorted similar concepts, stuffed them into folders. And so in the public eye, she found herself solidly linked to Harry Potter.

     But that part, at least, suited Ginny just fine.

     See, no one (except Tom) knew, but she had kind of a  _huge giant_  crush on Harry Potter.  _You and every other 11-year-old,_  a part of her had said. He was the Boy-Who-Lived-and-Also-Killed-the-Dark-Lord-and-Then-Later-Defended-the-Philosopher's-Stone-From-Him, after all.  _Just the fact that he's been in your house_ , a part of her would say,  _is more luck than you had any right to expect._  And that was enough to have her blushing and running away from him whenever possible for fear of embarrassing herself, and then embarrassing herself anyway with that very act, which further lessened the odds that she'd ever let herself speak to him.

     She didn't exactly resent that part of her mind. It was only acting in self-preservation. But things were different now, and they were different in more ways than one.

     And because thing were different...

     Afterward, she would swear she knew it would happen just before it did. It was because of those pink petals falling outside, not from a tree but from some magic effect or other, and because they were alone, and because the school year was ending, and because that moment in the owlery - loud, messy, awkward - was perfect in its imperfection, and because she'd read about this and she  _knew_  it happened like this, and because of when Queenie Greengrass said something like  _hey you're both famous and I do believe he's noticed_  and she'd felt all warm and mostly mostly mostly because of his glances and blushes and shyness and his getting teased by friends which she  _understood_  she had  _been there_  and it was so very obvious now that she saw it on him, and she just wanted to scream YES, I UNDERSTAND YOU, HARRY POTTER, I WAS THERE AND I AM THERE AND YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON ME AND I HAVE A CRUSH ON YOU AND YES I WILL GO OUT WITH YOU BECAUSE WE ARE THE SAME, I AM ON YOUR LEVEL, I WILL GO OUT WITH YOU!

      _She had never felt good enough before._  This she also realized - that if he had asked her before, she actually would have said no. She had had a crush, but she had not imagined any future, she had just directionlessly  _wished._  She would have said no on account of she didn't deserve that honor.

     But things were different now.

     So in that moment in the Owlery, she said "Yes, absolutely!" and blushed, and they had made a plan, and then she had rushed out,  _see you then,_  because that was the best thing at this point to minimize awkwardness. She'd read stories.

     She wasn't exactly sure what Harry had said, but she definitely got the intent. The words had been stumbling and awkward and breathless, but that was just how it went. She understood.

     And that was how Ginny Weasley got the boy.

* * *

     And the school year wound down.

     It was nice.

* * *

     "So, I was trying out more double witch powers, and... well, I can't really get them to do anything? I mean, nothing useful, even though there's definitely an effect. I just make these, like, puffs of smoke, or honey-smoke, or, I don't really know how to describe it?" Lying upside down, Ginny waved her hands as if summoning the right words to her lips. "Oh, and none of the smoke is actually a food or beverage. I tested." She shifted around onto her stomach again. It wasn't that comfortable. She was trying to find a comfortable position that was close to Harry, who was sitting on the floor against the side of her chair. They were the only two left awake in the Common Room.

     "Maybe," he said, "you've gotten a kind of cheat code, that lets you do things past your magic level... but the whole deal isn't complete - or you don't reach the full potential - until something else is full? Maybe there's still some  _other_  way you have to get to that level, in order to make it work? Like... " He turned his head around to look at her, and his hair brushed against hers. "Did it feel as if anything was missing?"

     "No..." she smiled. "It actually felt like nothing at all was missing. It was great."

     Harry fell silent. Ginny's eyes fell on his scar, and then she felt like a moron. And there was nothing she could think to say, nothing that wouldn't draw  _more_  attention to his dead parents, so she awkwardly leaned over and gave him a sort-of-hug with her arms around his neck and her cheek against his cheek.

     "I wonder," said Harry, "if your weird magic thing is in any way related to my weird magic thing." He indicated his scar. "That 'power of which even You-Know-Who knows not', or whatever."

     "Huh," said Ginny pensively. "Speaking of, isn't it weird that he would completely not know about something so important? Even if 'love' really isn't his thing. I wonder what made him overlook it. Or forget about it."

     "I never thought of it that way."

     "Well, anyway," she said, "I'll certainly get to find out if my weird magic thing can repel Dark magic. Since I'll be fighting demons." Ginny was picturing staticky figures, unnaturally tall and obscured by cloaks. Waves of drones sent up by Hell. The thought gave her a chill and a sense of adventure. She was a young-adult novel.

     "I sure hope it can," said Harry.

     "Yeah," said Ginny.

     "Be careful, okay?" said Harry.

     "As if you're ever careful," said Ginny.

     "I'm always careful. I'm as careful as I possibly can be, while still doing what's right. I don't look for trouble," said Harry.

     "Of course not," said Ginny, relaxing into the more-comfortable position with which the chair was intended to be used. She blinked, a film of tiredness over her eyes, and laid her head down on the armrest. Maybe she and Harry could fall asleep together in the same chair sometime. Though she didn't know if there was room.

     He said, "I still think you should let me help."

     She took a moment to reorient herself in the conversation.

     "No... nope. I'm the double witch here, not you." She giggled at the thought of Harry being a double witch, rather than a double wizard. What would his outfit look like? "I have super extra powers and a contract and stuff," she continued, "and you just have a, um,  _certain disregard for rules_  and whatever the other thing was. Not that that isn't awesome."

     Harry looked into the black ashes and lack of a fire in the fireplace. "We shouldn't keep staying up this late. We'll be really tired."

     "But how could I leeeaaave yooouuu!" Ginny moaned in mock-anguish. "And anyway, the school year is almost over! And finals were canceled. I don't know why Dumbledore was allowed to do that."

     "I guess Dumbledore pretty much does what he wants."

     "Yeah. Dumbledore pretty much does what he wants."

     "Seriously, we should go to bed," said Harry, standing up. Ginny reluctantly followed suit. They hugged, and Harry told her "stay safe," and went up to the boys 2nd-year dormitory, and Ginny told him "you too, hotshot" and went up to the girls 1st-year dormitory, and took a disoriented moment standing in the doorway to switch from her "Harry" thought-track to her "alone" thought-track.

      _Oh my gosh, I'm dating Harry Potter,_  she thought. It sunk in a little more every night, and she never wanted it to become normal.

      _Maybe real love,_  she thought,  _is when you really never stop being surprised at how lucky you are to be with them._  


     Maybe she should write that down.

* * *

     Somewhere in Scotland, carriages and thestrals left a castle, passing through a magical barrier through which no demon had ever come. Afterward, a train left a station. Soon, wixes left the train, passing through a magical barrier though which no Muggle had ever come. Then the magical children left each other, hugging and shaking hands and saying good-bye. Some of them would meet up over the summer; some of them would not meet up over the summer. Many of them would think of one another over the summer. Most of them had conflicting emotions about leaving Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

     On the drive to the Burrow, Ginny was thinking about how she and Harry had not had a first kiss yet, and that it was probably because they both felt really awkward about it and didn't know how this stuff worked yet. Also, they were only eleven and twelve. Arthur was asking the five kids all about their school year. Molly was asking Ginny all about her relationship with Harry. She dodged most of the questions with help from George and Fred, who turned out to have almost as many verbal distractions prepared as they had practical.

     Ginny's room had gathered no dust, because of magic. It had gathered something, however. There was a substance overlaid on the freshly-made bed, the windows that displayed the orchard with makeshift Quidditch goals, the posters of bands and of the Holyhead Harpies. Everything was just slightly less familiar than it should have been. That must be what happened when you made a contract with a magical creature and took on mysterious secret powers and responsibilities. Or maybe that was just growing up.

     Ginny fell backward onto her bed and felt the springs bounce and heard them creak and remembered she actually shouldn't be that rough with them. Looking at the ceiling, she realized her room had a whole  _lot_  of pink.

     For the first few days, normality was weird. There was a feeling like she'd looked up momentarily from an engaging novel because she had to deal with something in real life. You know how it is - you feel a little dazed, and a little annoyed, because looking up made you remember that nobody  _actually_  eats feasts in a Great Hall with four giant tables, or has classes on Divination and Charms, or gets to move independently from place to place without the accompaniment of parent or guardian. But then you cheer up because your mum is making delicious dinner, and afterward your brothers start a Quidditch scrimmage and you get to be Chaser, and when you're in bed the posters of bands on your walls remind you that somewhere in the world, close enough for you to buy their music, are things that you really, really love, and you remember that you like the real world, too.

     For a long time, Hogwarts had been like a world in a book. Now, it seemed that it still was. But now she knew for certain she would get to keep reading.

     A week into summer vacation and late into the night (she could stay up late sometimes, now that she didn't have class tomorrow), while reading an actual  _literal_  book, Ginny heard crumpling paper and turned to find her contract-giver, Ruby, stepping over a pile of her scrapped letters to Harry.

     "Demon time," said Ruby. "Let's burn."

     "Right now?" asked Ginny.

     "Right now," said Ruby. "Put down that book and come on."

     Ginny finished the paragraph, bookmarked, and followed Ruby to the fireplace. She avoided the creaking floorboards, and by luck avoided any people who might also be awake.

     "Shouldn't I tell my parents I'm going?"

     "No. They'll want to come, or you not to come, and that's dangerous. Here, I'll mute the sound of your Floo travel. And start the fire."

     She did so, by no discernible means. Ginny grabbed the pot from the mantle and tossed Floo powder into the newly flickering burn.

     "'The Estate of Entropy'," Ruby said.

     Ginny stepped in. "The Estate of Entropy," she said, and was sucked away.

     Fireplaces passed, eerily silent. Too fast to look out. Too dark to make out. They spun around her. She landed in a pile of ash, bending her knees to lessen the impact. She hesitated to step out onto the deep, white rug, because usually her mum would Scourgify her feet so she didn't get the ash everywhere, and her mum wasn't here.

     "Come on," said Ruby. "There's going to be a lot more than ash on the ground, if you don't hurry."

     Ginny got going.

     "You remind me of one of the Pleiades," Ruby commented idly.

     The house seemed to have more space than it knew what to do with, as well as an abundance of detailed woodwork on corners and ceilings. Several rooms through which Ruby led her had fancy crystal chandeliers that had to have been held up by magic. Except that, due to certain absences like Floo powder by the fire and broomsticks by the door, Ginny was slowly realizing -

     "This is a Muggle house."

     "Eeyup."

     The two of them entered a gloomy and clean stairwell that stretched up and curved slightly.

     "It's not connected to the Floo network."

     "I fixed that. Come on, come on!"

     Ginny picked up the pace a bit; luckily, she hadn't already changed into her pajamas.

     The house was dark, due to it being night time. But before Ruby pointed out the room containing a demon, Ginny could guess which it was because there was a deeper darkness seeping around the door-frame.

     "You should transform now."

     "Right." Ginny steeled her confidence. Like dunking her head underwater, she entered the formless and weightless space. Orange streaks spun around and coalesced into her outfit quickly, like they wanted to get back to the mission as soon as possible. The pieces fit exactly where they needed to be, coming into being already on her body, gaining creases and shadow and tangibility. Her wand appeared in her hand and she squeezed it, transformation complete. Orange miasma splashed away and she was again in her runner's crouch on the floor, feeling dust under her hand in a dark hallway. She wiped it off and stood up, feeling bigger and brighter.

     "Ready?" asked Ruby.

     "Ready," said Ginny. She stepped forward, grabbed the very cold doorknob and threw open the door, and there was the -

     the -

     there was -

     the the the

      _oh no oh my god_  


  
there was um

     grabbed the very cold doorknob and threw open the door - the door - the door - behind the door -

     If she hadn't been a double witch, if she hadn't been in uniform, she would have screamed.

     It didn't make sense. It wasn't like magic, it wasn't like enchantment. There were gears. Gears crunching everywhere in the huge, incoherently expansive thing, they were rusted and chipped, broken. Some spun with nothing to connect to, because the connecting gear had a fallen-out chunk. Some gears had things stuck between them, and they were desperately trying to push the things through and turn, but they couldn't - the bones, and skin, and fake human limbs gleaming metallic, all grinding away infinitely slowly. An infinite crunching noise that jittered all through her. There was blood on the gears, or there was rust. It was so much bigger than the room should have been, and there was a gray haze everywhere, drifting from somewhere deep, deep inside. Gears turned, pistons shot back and forth, belts trundled along their tracks, and it was all working together, all connected, every last screeching, seemingly-broken instance of metal dragging against other metal, it was all a hot, hot, hot, hot, hot machine.

     "What do I  _do?"_  Ginny squeaked, standing frozen at the entrance.

     "Go in and find the demon," Ruby replied, as cavalier as ever.

     "In  _there?"_  Ginny almost said, except she didn't say that, she stopped herself, because -  _of course_  in there. Had she thought it was going to be easy?

     "Okay," Ginny actually said, and charged inside.

     Oh god, it was  _hot hot hot hot hot,_  it was a sunburn even under her clothes, it was burning away her wonderful double witch feeling of  _right._  And then the smoke was in her throat, and it was burning even inside her body. She coughed again and again, and wished she could somehow cough with her eyes, but she didn't close them, because she had to see where she stepped. Somewhere farther in, the demon must be the source of the smoke. But the smoke would kill her before she could run that far. Could she climb higher and get above it? She ran toward the side, toward a system of tangled pipes that jutted from the floor and into other sections of the machine. She jumped with her extra-special double witch jumping powers, and landed impossibly lightly without a clang. (Ruby was suddenly there next to her.) Ginny prepared for a second jump, and then something opened in the pipe she was on and hissed, and scalding air burst onto her face and hands, and she shrieked. Stumbling back, she magically kept her balance on the pipe, and then another valve opened that sent her back the other way, and there was a third valve right under her -

     "Use your magic!" said Ruby, and Ginny automatically sent  _force_  through her wand, and honey-smoke slurped out from the tip, enveloping the air-spewing valves and sending delicious coolness backward onto her skin.

     In the places the spell (probably a charm?) had touched, the pipes seemed to have become translucent amber. The new gas spewing from the valves was more of what Ginny had just produced, and it was pushing away the gray smoke and the heat. On a hunch, she stepped straight through through the spray of orange stuff, and it was like a little taste of the weightless space, lighting on her neck and shoulders and soaking in.

     "So that's what that does." Her mouth-corners twitched up. Then she crouched and leaped back into the heat of the demon's creations, running as fast as she could, and that was  _fast._  In parallel, her mind took off thinking. She couldn't use the charm continuously, she guessed, because it would tire her magic out. She would use it when she really extra-needed to. The burning latched on and clawed at her again, and her eyes watered, and she was passing by rusting gears and a thick, huge, rusty gear fell to the ground almost onto her, clanging into her eardrums from impact on the steel patterned floor. Then there were more, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, and she was dodging and weaving around them, her heart jumping back and forth with the narrow escapes and jarring crashes. She swiveled her wand arm up and splashed out the charm and then a giant amber gear which she'd hit melted into the floor - instead of colliding, it sank halfway down, and then it pulled itself up and went spinning away, and Ginny was still running but she caught in glances her friendly gear jumping and whirring like a record and smashing other gears out of the way and into pieces.

     A metal mesh network like a fence or a flyswatter rose high, high up ahead. The gears and pistons and everything else adorned it, and behind were the giant smokestacks streaming out the smoke. The demon was somewhere here, wasn't it? Did she need to climb the mesh wall? Ginny got ready to jump and charm some of the moving parts so she could safely land on them. She would have to time it right, and the ruckus of the falling gears were making it hard to -

      Ginny tripped over a body and launched her hands out to break her fall, bruising her palms and jarring her bones and  _she'd tripped over a body._  


  
Ginny shoved herself to her feet and scampered to the motionless man. His formal shirt was soaked with and smudged with oil, and he was pale and not moving, not even his chest, and he was dead.

     She'd already  _seen_  the bones and ripped flesh between the gears - but she hadn't  _thought_  - she'd  _intentionally_  not thought -

      _Had she even asked why demons needed to be defeated?_  


     Her breath was catching, sticky, lodged in her throat, and the smoke wasn't helping her tears. She jumped up and spun around just as a gear slammed into the ground where she was going to step, shaking the world, but she sprayed it with her charm and ran through it, the ambery surface sloshing out of her way like gelatin to let her pass.

     Where was the demon? What did a demon  _look like?_  She just had to kill it, and things would go back to okay.

     "RUBY WHERE'S THE ACTUAL DEMON?" she yelled, and Ruby was already at her side, running alongside her on much tinier legs.

     "Ah, I was a little unhelpful," said Ruby. "This time, at least, it's just sort of... everywhere! The machine itself is the demon!"

      _"What?"_  Ginny stopped, and had the presence of mind to stick her wand overhead and slosh the charm about, stopping at least two gears in their plummet. "Then what do I -" she stopped and, instead of asking, thought.  _I've got to break the machine. Make it not work._  She knew from watching her father that it was really, really easy to break nonmagical devices. But that was the extent of her knowledge.

     She took off running again. She wanted to stay ahead of the gears, and being at a high point might help her strategize.

     (And running was amazing. She wasn't normally out of shape or anything, but her outfit granted her amazing speed and endurance, all when it should have been a hindrance. Yet it wasn't the outfit moving her legs - it was all her.)

     She jumped, then cast. Her legs and arms latched onto newly clear and orange metal mesh like a climbing animal, a monkey or something. Ginny the double witch clung to the wall and pulled herself upward, shifting the entire bulk of her frame against gravity. Reached up, grabbed, pulled. She was vertical. She could fall and die, or maybe it took a lot farther to kill a double witch. Reached up, grabbed, pulled. Again, again. She wasn't at home and she didn't know how anything worked, how a dead man and her could exist at once, how gears and metal could combine and make something happen, (again, again, again) how she'd been thrown into a dangerous world by the innocent finding of a diary and without any option to turn away. (again, again, again) But she did know one thing, and that was her single super-powered charm, soaking over the bars now from the wooden tip of her wand.

     "Choose a special phrase to go with it," Ruby advised, her paws sticking to the other side of the mesh like magnets.

      _"Remake Honey,"_  Ginny blurted. "No... that's silly. Will I have to stick with the same one?" As she spoke, she lifted herself over the top of the fence and beheld the other side, in full detail, and there were people. She didn't, at first, understand what was going on. They were on conveyor belts. These were blank-faced and limp people, but alive; standing still, but moving - because of the belts. They moved ever farther, then the belt looped around, and the person at the end fell into a deep, bright trench where the color red leaped like a candle. She got it.

     "No!" Ginny shrieked, despite how much good it wouldn't do. "Move! Get off!"

     The people stood still, yet moved forward. She'd climbed so high, yet she was so far away, and she was seized by a mad desire to jump down the other side. She  _had_  to get there and save them, don't you get it,  _had to -_  


      _"SAVE THEM!"_  she screamed, and it was like a spell, but in English, and it burst from her wand, pulling her arm out straight and streaming to the people in streaks of purple and enveloping the one in the front. Ginny jerked her hand to the side and the woman sprang into motion, jumping off the conveyor belt and running the opposite way. She shoved every other zombified person off of the belt to safety and when she was done, the purple streams retreated and left her body inactive again, and she slumped onto the conveyor belt herself. It carried her, half on and half dragging, back toward the trench, and as Ginny desperately tried to cast the spell again, the woman did nothing, and finally fell. The pyre flared.

     Ginny flared.

      _"Reducto! Reducto! Reducto!"_  She forced the anger ripping through her veins into her shirt - sleeves - arm - hand - wand -  _out,_  letting it spin through the smoky void and explode against one conveyor belt. She missed twice and hit once, but that took it out, and the leather flopped to the side, the wheels still pushing so that it rolled up in one spot, and the people fell motionless atop it. She turned to a second belt.

      _"Reducto! Reducto! REDUCTO!"_  It was burning her throat - death. She wouldn't allow it. She would smash and smash until this broken machine stopped moving.

      _"Reducto! Reducto!"_  Another belt was killed. _"Reducto!"_  Another one. _"REDUCTO! REDUCTO!_ _REDUC-"_  she made a croaking noise and staggered, dizzy. The smoke. The smoke was burning her throat. She tried to produce the cleansing honey, and failed. Her magic was done. Not her double witch magic but her ordinary magic, you couldn't just keep casting forever...

     Her magic was like an aching second heart that was tired and spent from pumping out a lifetime. The smoke was in her head. Ginny was standing atop a giant fence, and staring down at death.

      _"Reducto,"_  she croaked, and was seized by a wave of nausea that made her sink to her knees, nearly falling off. The weak spell flew and scorched the ground. Stillness was stealing over her. Too much smoke and too little air. The machine screamed like a dying animal, but what it really was, was the metal scraping against metal, being forced ways it wasn't built to move. It was increasing now in both pitch and volume, a mockery of an orchestra serenading Ginny's second slow lapse into oblivion. Higher and higher, and it was almost worse than the first time in the Chamber, and she wanted to  _Reducto_  whatever specific piece was doing that, but she would never raise her arm again, because she was infinitely tired. But then suddenly it stopped. It was followed by a clang, and then it really stopped.

     The machine was as still as Ginny herself. It had already been broken, horribly broken, but it had never ceased moving until now. She must have taken out a vital part - and, and now - a flood of fresh air assaulted her windpipe and elicited a hacking, painful series of coughs, scraping along her throat like they meant to rip it out.

     There was fresh air, and she was back in the Muggle house, in her own clothes, and she was on the ground and starting, just starting, to shake.

     It was unthinkable, incredible, that this world of death could also include quiet houses, soft beds, and parents who demanded to know, just as soon as they'd healed up your throat, what on Earth you were doing last night to get it injured like that. And so it was in an incredulous haze that Ginny told them the calculated lie Ruby fed her through telepathy. Thinking later on, she was astounded that they'd believed it.

     Ginny had a home to return to, and it was an amazing blessing compared to those who wouldn't return home. Yet what it all came down to (she remarked with an unfamiliar, unsettlingly bitter irony) was that there were some things you couldn't go through without coming out changed, and taking on a - how could you even describe it? A  _demon_  - was one of them.


	3. Rule Number 2: Don't get attached to somebody you could lose.

      _Dear Ginny,_  
  
 _Yeah, it's not going so well over here. Pretty sure my aunt & uncle & cousin were hoping I'd just stay at school over the summer this time. Actually, do you think I could_  _do that? Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying being back home. Honestly, hearing from you was the best part of my summer so far. So, how's the double witch thing working out? Did you fight anything yet?? What spells did you use? Did you get hurt?_   _Sorry, I probably shouldn't focus so much on that. It's because I'm worried about you. You could get hurt and I wouldn't even know. Maybe I should get a Sneakoscope or something. Is that what a Sneakoscope does? I'm not sure. So what other stuff are you doing? Quidditch probably. You should totally try out for the Gryffindor team next year. You're a fan of the Holyhead Harpies, right? I don't know many pro teams yet so I shouldn't jump on that bandwagon just yet, because Ron might be jealous that I didn't jump on his. His Quidditch bandwagon - with the Cannons. You know what I mean. Okay this is getting long and I shouldn't make your owl wait so I'll sign off here. Stay safe!_  


_Love, Harry_

_P.S. I don't know what the Pleiades is either, but there's a small chance I can swing a trip to the library this weekend so I'll try and find out then._

* * *

     One of the things Ginny had learned in the magical castle of Hogwarts was the rather mundane skill of time management.

     Before she learned this, her sleep schedule and stress levels were rocky and prone to fluctuation. On one such poorly-planned night, with the electric charge of new freedom and the dead lead weight of put-off responsibilities jointly keeping her awake approaching midnight, she could be found in the common room repetitively practicing  _Wingardium Leviosa,_  for she was supposed to have it down by the following day.

     She would say the words, and then the targeted pin cushion would attempt to rise, and then the targeted pin cushion would fall, landing softly, and it was like staring at a metronome, or more specifically, a hypnotist's swinging watch. It locked down her attention, greedily gathering all of it. Even as Ginny's voice repeated the spell, it was beginning to feel like an involuntary action, or one performed by someone else. She lifted the pin cushion, then dropped it. She couldn't stop. In the sort of seemingly seamless transition achieved only in states of exhaustion, she stepped down into a nightmare, defined not by events, or at least none that she could report afterward, but by an overpowering feeling of choking constriction, aching repetition, and the confused impression of mazes, or walls, or small geometric shapes. She woke up only two hours later to find that the pin cushion had been set on fire, then put out by the school's automatic safety enchantments.

     And now it was happening all over again. Sneaking out at night to fight a demon - that was the rise of the pin cushion. Returning home, sometimes sneaking back to bed, sometimes needing an alibi - that was the pin cushion's fall. The time and space between one battle and the next - that was starting to feel as if experienced through a trance. And the battles with demons - they were the nightmare.

     "Watch out for this one," Ruby would say as they skulked through nighttime alleyways, looking for the labyrinth. "It'll seem dead, but then suddenly get bigger." And Ginny's dread would grow. She didn't look forward to transforming. Her double witch powers had been special before, but now they were, in her mind, heavily linked or even chained to the concept of the demonic labyrinth, and the uniquely twisted reality each presented. She could practically feel the outfit, the orange miasma, the transformation  _trying_  to grant her that feeling of freedom and safety, but the main problem with that was that she was definitely neither free nor safe anymore. And after every battle, that cleansing force felt weaker.

     That didn't matter, though, because people were being killed. That fact had become something of a fully general counterargument for her, a rebuttal to any complaint. It was what she told herself when Ruby summoned her out of bed for another nightmare, and when she fed her parents another lie and Ruby's power made them believe it, and when she wanted to run screaming from the demon's domain and scrub her mind clean of the memory, or just sink to her knees where she stood and never get up, and let the flashing pink waves of the demon's fire swallow her up whole. She respectively had to do the former and couldn't do the latter things, because people were being killed and she had to  _save them._  


     "You're doing really well," Ruby would cheerfully remark as they walked away from another deconstructed aberration. Ginny would look to the side at her incredulously, and wonder what this thing was and how it spoke so like a human and so  _not_  like a human, and then look at the dark void above and feel cold and alone.

     Yet what right to feel alone had the girlfriend of Harry Potter? Indeed, that was the message that seemed to emanate from the papers on Ginny's writing desk whenever she looked at it. The papers that had writing on them were all attempts to write Harry Potter a letter, and most she considered failures. For what on Earth was there to say? She couldn't describe her condition, her battles, her powers, because he was already worried, and that would confirm more of his fears than he even knew he had. And to describe the events in her "regular" life, that life which she drifted through in a trance? That wasn't her regular life. To act as if it was would be nothing but lies. And so the papers lay untouched for increasing stretches of time, and sometimes she would be seized by the horrific idea of Harry thinking she'd forgotten about him, or Harry actually forgetting about her, and the paralyzing fear would pulse in her chest unbearably until fighting demons made her forget it, and the papers lay untouched ever longer.

     Ginny's feet met the smooth, clean whiteness of the hospital floor.

     "I don't feel good," she blurted, thinking of the heavily sterilized smell and the proximity of diseases and the unknown, but surely fearful labyrinth that awaited, and the mortal exhaustion that would find her within, whether after or before the battle was over.

      _"Every single night, the same arrangement,"_  sang Ruby.  _"I go out and fight the fight. Still, I always feel this strange estrangement - nothing here is real, nothing here is right."_  


     "Er - yeah. Pretty much that." Ginny was already mentally berating herself. Did she think if she complained, Ruby would let her off the hook? Let her go home?  _People were being killed._  She wouldn't let  _herself_  off the hook.

      _Oh, do let's stop arguing,_  begged another part of Ginny's mind, and she cut off the criticism. She had enough coming at her without it.

     Ruby set off, turned a corner, navigated the hallways, and Ginny followed. It was a Muggle hospital. It was nowhere near anywhere Ginny would normally have gone. She suddenly thought of her metaphor in which Hogwarts was a book she'd had to stop reading, and felt such a pang of  _wanting to be there_  that, if she were younger, she probably would have involuntarily Apparated onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters. She wanted to find that book and vicariously live someone else's life, even if it was just for while. She wanted to be a single witch.

     There was the darkness behind the door. It was a patient's room. Ginny thought of someone diseased or injured being ensnared by a demon and felt sick.

     "Why does it have to be in a hospital?"

     "It's returning home," said Ruby cryptically. "Transform."

     Ginny transformed. Somehow the orange that swirled around her seemed like so much less than it used to. It was darker. The outfit that formed of it contained strands of this darkness which slithered over her skin for a moment as she returned to the corporeal realm. Her heart beat hard. Ginny stepped forward, toward the door.

     "The lizard familiar you killed was from this demon," Ruby said.

     So, Ginny mused, pulling open the door, based on that she could expect maybe lizards, and probably fire.

     On that count, she wasn't disappointed.

* * *

     Ginny was lying on her bed. She wasn't even under the covers. She wasn't about to sleep. It was one of those nights where the adrenaline stayed in her too long... or something like that. All she knew was that it was dark (apart from some flickering lights outside), she was safe (for the moment), she was tired (though when wasn't she?), and yet her body felt as if it was still in a labyrinth.

     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

     What was it trying to tell her?

     Ginny's eyes fell on her Holyhead Harpies poster. She thought she'd taken it down. Someone in her family must have put it back, thinking it was removed by mistake. She got up to remove it again. Looking at it these days made her feel sick, because it was from a life she couldn't return to.

     "Ginny!"

     She spun round.

     "Harry!"

     He was  _there._  He was just  _there,_  in her room,  _present_ , the failed letters on her desk were gone, and she couldn't see his expression of course, but -

     She bounced off her bed and ran up to him. "I missed you," she gasped. "I-I'm sorry I didn't write more letters, I mean, I couldn't think of what to write!"

     "I missed you too." He must have been smiling. It was carried on his voice.

     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

     Ginny wanted to cry. This was a bigger anchor to normality than she could have imagined. Harry was everything she had lost - warm, caring, stable, singularly magical, perfect. She moved forward to hug him, wrapping her arms around his chest and -

 

     **~ GOP ~**  


     He shattered to streaks of light.

      **~ BLIP ~**  


     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

     Red cut gemstones clattered and bounced around her, not in her room, in an irrational location, the plush back of a giant stuffed animal in a place where gems skittered through the air. The stuffed animal's head twisted toward her and growled, its plush form morphing into the shape of a real wolf instead of a toy, and Ginny stumbled off the moving surface and fell in her double witch clothing through the air. Magic power surged around her arms and legs and she landed perfectly on the branch of a tree.

     Chaos around her. She was familiar with that. She looked up, around. There was a large and multicolored forest below her, but an extensive human-made development hung above her, upside-down; it seemed as if its "down" was her "up". Blasting, spinning, whirring through the space around and between were swords, runes, scientific instruments,  glowing magical effects, ghostly white figures, and many, many red cut gemstones.

     Harry had been a trick. She'd been in a labyrinth the whole time. But she couldn't get sad now, she wouldn't let herself, because -

      _Crunch._ A creature made of a tree with the head of a wolf was reaching for her from below, in the forest. She leaped from the top of the tree and spun in the air, stomach turning as the pull of gravity turned around her...

     - couldn't get sad now, because her fighting practice was taking command, and she had to let it, in order to stay alive.

     But she would indeed let herself get  _angry_.

     Ginny's feet slammed into the roof of a building, making little cracks in the concrete. It was an amazing thing, to be harder than concrete. Orange sparks crackled around her shoes and gloves. As abnormal as demons were, she had an amount of weirdness herself. Weirdness that propelled her with unusual speed as she dashed across the rooftop, weirdness that imbued her spells and curses with absurd power as she smashed to pieces a metallic golem that stood in her way without breaking stride. She was on reconnaissance: running around the labyrinth "world" until she caught whiff of something big and powerful, something in charge that she needed to kill.

     Red cut gemstones pelted her head and back. She caught one as she ran, and looked at it. It immediately caught fire. She hurled it away from her and as it sailed it hit others, spreading the fire, and then she was in a corrosive hailstorm, little flaming meteors obscuring her vision. She stopped running, looked up.

     "Remake Honey!"

     Orange syrup streamed out of her wand into the air and drowned a selection of the gems, knocking some off course and otherwise not helping very much. There was something behind her. Ginny turned just in time and her  _protego_  blocked the metal arm swinging for her head. Then she jammed her wand right onto the plastic or glass eye of the golem and said  _"reducto",_  and its head exploded backwards into the air. There were five more of them, blocky and awkward, as well as a white wolf growling in front of them.

      _"Save them,"_ Ginny cast, for that had become this spell's incantation, and a purple grip shot from her wand to the heart of the wolf, bending it to her will. She made it attack. A mountain of growling fur fell upon the metallic golems and they hit hard but were ultimately dismantled, spurting oil as if it were blood, with the wolf bleeding actual blood from its injuries. Ginny released it, left it confused, and ran again.

     She could see the curvature of the labyrinth. If she ran long enough, would she come back to where she started? If so, she would start a run through the forest. But that seemed trickier - it would surely be extra dangerous in the confined space under trees. Maybe she could jump across their tops? Was that actually a feasible thing, even for a double witch? Wait. There was something off. What had changed? She hated this feeling, it happened all too often when fighting demons and was always followed up by a terrifying realization. Nothing about  _her_  had changed, had it? All parts there, full outfit on, wind streaming across her face as she ran at unusual speeds. Was there some monster following her? Latched onto her? She could never quite be sure about that, but -  _oh!_  


     The red cut gems were gone. They'd been everywhere before, in her vision at all times, and now they were nowhere, unless they were behind her, but she wasn't about to glance back because she'd learned previously that even a double witch can trip or run into a wall. Instead, she had a different way to look behind her. Ginny jumped, not too high but at a twist, so that she'd spin in the air and hit the ground at an angle that, along with a burst of magic, helped arrest her momentum. (This burst was the same sort of magic that provided most of her double athleticism; she'd learned over time to apply it just a bit more specifically and consciously.)

     From this fancy turn, she learned 2 things.

  * that she was indeed being followed.
  * where the gemstones had gone.



     All of the gems, enveloped and united in a colossally sparking fire and shaped roughly into a face, were following her.

     Ginny's heels scraped on the roof where she landed, and a blast of orange power countered her motion and set her still. The fire - it really was  _colossal,_  she just couldn't stress that enough - the gemstone fire was speeding toward her. Maybe she should have kept running, but she'd found the demon. Only it was going to burn her up in a second, unless she cast -

     "Remake honey!"

     And that life-saving substance, the same color as her hair, burst forth and sprayed into the fire -

 

     **~ BLIP ~**  


     She was sitting on the sidewalk.

     Her heart was beating hard. Hard like she'd been running...

     But she hadn't been.

     She was sitting on a sidewalk in a dingy, brown cityscape... all dust, bricks, faded posters and failing street lamps. Lights flickered. Shapes moved behind windows, but no one was outside.

     "How many layers  _are_  there?" growled Ginny, getting up.

     Nobody answered. Even Ruby was absent.

     Ginny crept down the street and around the corner. The atmosphere made her want to sneak. She definitely wasn't "meant" to be here. Though, of course, when was she ever welcome in a demon's labyrinth?

     After two more corners, she found people. They were like many of the people she found lost in a labyrinth: wandering, aimless, not-all-there. However, it was an added shock, when one turned her way, to discover that they didn't have faces. Or at least, their faces were obscured by darkness like a creeping ink smudge, so that she couldn't tell what expressions they might have. She stepped forward.

     "Miss... excuse me?" Just in case they were functional at all. She didn't know whether these were people who could still be saved, brought out into the sunlight, or not. Actually, given the lack of faces, and the tricky nature of this demon... she wasn't sure if these were real people at all.

     She placed her hand on a woman's shoulder.

 

      **~ GOP ~**  


     She shattered to streaks of light.

     Ginny jerked backward, shivering, a creepy chill cast over her body by the woman's disappearance. The other faceless people milled around, unfazed. She didn't want to touch any more.

     Instead, since there was pretty much only one way to proceed in this area, she scaled the wall on her right and pulled herself onto the roof, where she scampered a few meters and then hopped back down to ground level, the faceless crowd left behind. She proceeded through the dim streets on her own.

     She came up on a patch of street lit by no working street lamps at all, in which she could make out scuttling shapes on the ground and adjacent walls. Could these be the foreshadowed lizards? She did get the vague feeling that her goal was just a little distance past them.

      _"Lumos,"_  said Ginny, and her wand lit up the street, and it was spiders.

     They ran at her. Tiny spiders, large spiders, and even medium spiders were coming straight for her and she was frozen. An instant later an image flashed through her mind of them reaching her, climbing up her and the tiny legs and hairs and an instinctive, visceral terror grabbed her heels and made them turn and she was running hard and fast, soles and heart pounding even as memories of teasing Ron about his phobia swam up and stuck sharply in her throat. She suddenly understood his fear completely, all due to the mob of prickly, insidious legs, hairs, torsos, skittering noises,  _eyes, eyes, eyes_  coming straight for her and hot on her tail through the dusty streets. They were gaining.  _They were gaining._  How fast did they have to be? She saw spiders in the corner of her eyes, running along the walls, defying gravity. Then they leaped at her, and landed on the ground, not on her, but they were  _gaining -_  


     A spider grabbed onto Ginny's hair and she screamed. (And to think that this, of all horrors, was one she couldn't handle) but they were so  _small,_  so  _many,_  and it was  _touching her no no no no_  she batted at her head furiously with her hands and it flew off somewhere and then she came to her senses and turned around.

      _"Remake honey!"_  


     The charm splashed onto the hoard of spiders and had no effect. Ginny froze again within a fresh wave of horror. They were coming for her, head-on, she could see how very many there were. She stumbled backward, panicking, and -

 

      **~ GOP ~**  


     (The spiders advanced) and Ginny was standing at the edge of the crowd of people; she'd touched one by mistake. Immediately she turned again and ran through their midst,

 

      **~ GOP ~**  


 

accidentally

 

      **~ GOP ~**  


hitting and deleting some as she went.

 

      **~ GOP ~**  


 

     And she was on the other side, and the spiders were swarming after her, through the cracks and crevices, over the people, and due to both mindless panic with brilliant inspiration she yelled  _"SAVE THEM!",_  jetting streams of purple into multiple targets in the crowd. "SMASH THE SPIDERS!" Ginny yelled, and the faceless people obeyed, stomping and crushing, suddenly spurred into action. And then she thought she was safe, for a moment, until one person and quickly another fell under a deluge of spiders and disappeared from view. It was a third one now, and Ginny couldn't see what was happening to them, she could only imagine, and then it like the the first time, like tripping over a body the first time, and Ginny was screaming again, except it was in her heart.

     "No," she said out loud, and she did what she could. She scaled the wall, climbed onto the roof, and took off running at unusual speeds toward the end of the road, toward the demon. End it, and the labyrinth would melt away. End it, and that would end it.

     She careened past the completely dark area. No spiders were left. She came up on the end of the road. She entered an ancient, gutted toy shop. She ran past mannequins and sale bins and a cash register. She dashed toward a single teenage girl who turned as Ginny entered and looked momentarily overjoyed, then quickly disappointed. She stopped.

     "you ain't her, of course," said the girl, turning away again. Ginny was frozen, caught off guard.

     The girl sighed. "i heard the goppin', an' i thought maybe. but no."

     Ginny was still frozen, and still caught off guard. There was silence. The girl was half-shrouded in shadows in the back of the shop. The windows were boarded. The wallpaper was peeling away.

     "Who are you?" asked Ginny.

     "well, i'm the witch, en't i?" drawled the girl, almost disdainfully.

     "'Demon'," corrected Ruby. "We've been calling them 'demons'."

     Ginny glanced down. Ruby seemed to have appeared nearby her legs.

     "heh, yeah, whatever ya like. en't it just the funniest d*** thing, though - i didn't actually get to turn into a monster? not me. trapped here in the labyrinth, but stayin' completely myself." The girl turned, smiling, teeth sharp and some broken. She had a face, but her eyes alone were obscured by the same inky darkness as the other humans. "well, come on," she said. "kill me."

     Then she was walking toward Ginny as Ginny the double witch continued to not know how to respond. The girl had messy black hair like Harry, but longer. Her face was scratched, creased, and pale - all that Ginny would expect from someone who lived in this place. Her ragged jeans and t-shirt were the exact opposite of Ginny's extravagant double witch attire. The girl grabbed Ginny's shoulders. There was a great, echoing absence of a  _gop._  


     "kill me."

     "Wait. I'm not sure if - if maybe you can be saved, or something?"

     "cut the bs, miss magical girl. kill me."

     Ginny pushed the girl's arms off of her. "Wait. Just let me - Ruby, what's the deal with her? Is she a person or a demon?"

     Ruby seemed to have disappeared.

      _"i want you to kill me."_  The girl snatched Ginny's wand. She hadn't been holding it tightly - she was a fool -

     "Give that back!" She grabbed for it. The girl held the tip to her own throat.

     "Don't!"

      _"abracadabra."_  


     And there was a flash of green light -

 

      **~ BIP ~**  


     And a clattering noise. Ginny's wand, fallen to the hospital floor some distance in front of her.

     Then a thumping noise. Ginny's knees, fallen to the hospital floor directly below her.

     Next, a sighing noise. Ginny's heart, fallen flat and sliding down over her rib cage, spent. But not really. Of course not. It was just a metaphor.

     Ginny's soul gem swirled dark, dark, dark.

     Ginny was crying.

     She didn't understand suicide. After all she had seen... her job had been so  _linear_  before. She hadn't realized. Kill the monster, save the victims. It was clear-cut. All the horror... at least it was simple. Raise the pin cushion up, lower the pin cushion down.

     And why hadn't she done more? She'd said "don't". She didn't even grab for the wand twice. Why? Because she was trained to make sure demons died? They were supposed to be monsters. What did it mean that one could look like a person? What familiar had grown into  _that?_  


     The faceless people. The ones she'd killed, to save herself from spiders. Maybe they were people. She couldn't tell. She'd just ripped their will away from them. What she had done - it was exactly like the Imperius Curse. It actually was. And that was Unforgivable.

     Yet even that would be forgivable, if she could just be absolutely sure it was for the right cause.

     She wasn't sure.

     She didn't know what to do. All this destruction. All this rip, tear, kill. She was so sick of it - when you think of being a hero, you think of looking powerful in your cape, and flying over the rooftops, you don't think of what you'll be  _doing._  She hadn't wanted this.

     Something was out of place, something  _hurt_  very, very much, something was degrading... not in her body. Nowhere she could find. It just...

     She slipped her soul gem into her hand out of nowhere. It was hardly orange anymore. There was a lot of black. Very, very much. She hadn't realized...

     She needed  _help._  


     Her vision was flickering and separating out, as her eyes weakly crossed and uncrossed. Colors were brightening. She was panting, hunched down, staring at the white tile ground and at nothing.

     In a state like this, she reflected, a hospital was kind of the best place for her to be.

     Wait... no. No, it  _wasn't._  


     "Ruby."

     There was no answer.

      _"Ruby."_  


     "Yes?" The excessively childlike voice replied.

     "Open a Floo thingy from here to Harry's house. Take me there.  _Now."_  


     "Absolutely not. That wouldn't suit our goals at all. This feeling is perfectly natural, and you should let it consume you."

     Ginny clenched her teeth tight and clutched her soul gem tighter.  _"Do it,_  Ruby. Or I'll smash this  _thing_  against the ground and you can have your stupid contract back and I'll leave and be  _done._  I'll  _smash it."_  


     "That would kill you."

      _"I DON'T CARE!"_  


     Did she not  _get_  it? That Ginny was about to implode?

     There was a pause. Then Ruby said, "fine."

     She could hear her padding over to the door. Of course - there wasn't a fireplace in a hospital room. Ginny pushed herself up, forced her eyes back into focus. It was hard. It was so hard. Ginny pulled herself to her feet and to the door, Ruby had left it open, they were heading down the hall and Ginny was stumbling every three steps. It took forever. An entire forever later, except that Ginny could hardly remember those last several minutes, they were entering an employee break room and that had a semblance of a fireplace, even though it had only ever been used for fake electric fires. Ruby pushed the electric apparatus aside, and set the nook ablaze with enchanted green fire - she didn't even use any wood. Ginny crunched herself down inside it and waited for the address.

     "Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey," said Ruby.

     "Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey," said Ginny.

     Ginny spun away.

     The interim. It was almost like she was back in the weightless place. Spinning through flues, she was indeed weightless. And the ash that swirled around her was the same grey color as the end of her dress. Highlighting very poetically the way she was burning down to cinders...

     She landed and rolled out of the fireplace, soot staining the carpet seven ways to Sunday.  _"Susurrans,_  'it's Ginny'," she said into her wand (it was one of the very first spells she'd learned), and the words flew away up the stairs as she picked herself up.

     She didn't hear him come down. He was silent. He tiptoed out around the corner, and there was Harry, in pajamas and drowsy, and there was Ginny, soot-covered and shaking, and as his excitement melted into worry she marched forward and shoved her hand onto his face  _just to make sure._  


     Then she sighed and fell into his arms, which arrived to catch her just in time.

     She meant to say something, but she choked on it, like the ashes were bubbling out of her throat.

     He said: "Ginny..."

     And there was silence hissing out like a neurotoxin. She was here, he was here, and she suddenly knew it wasn't enough. There was only one thing to do now. She would slump to the ground and go to sleep forever. Some reservoir inside her had simply been totally spent.

     "I looked up the Pleiades," said Harry.

     Which was such an completely unexpected thing to say that -

     "It's a star cluster named after seven sisters in Greek mythology. Maia, Electra... um, Taygete, Alcyone, Calaeno, Sterope, and... yeah, Merope."  


     Which was so unexpected that the sound that came out of her was a barely recognizable, squeaky, strangled laugh, or maybe it was just ashes leaving her body.

     She took a breath, which felt unusually cold. She let herself feel the folds in his shirt and by extension his skin underneath, and from there she felt her own skin (which was ashy), her muscles (which were achy), and what might have been her veins - although her intuitive understanding of her inner body parts was shaky - through which a powerful pumping current still streamed.

     She let herself realize this wasn't over yet. Which meant there was something she had to deal with.

     "I - I need help." said Ginny into the folds of a shirt. "I need to know whether I'm right," her voice wavered, "whether I'm doing things right, and how to change if not. You're the best person I know..."

     "I'll do whatever I can," said Harry, because he was super great.

     "While I was fighting," Ginny said, "I used a spell on... people, who were probably real people... that made them do what I wanted. It was just like the Imperius Curse. And I made them die to save me, when I was supposed to be saving them. And then, the demon that had them - it was like a person, just like a kid, like  _us,_  it didn't seem like a monster, and it  _wanted_  to die, and I let it... I wasn't sure what to do, but I just let it happen, like I wanted it to be out of my hands..."

     "You're  _not_  evil, Ginny."

     She wasn't? Oh, that was a relief. If only it were that simple.

     "You can't possibly be," he said. "If you've been out there all this time fighting to save people from demons, then you're... you're  _really_  good at love. Well, that sounds weird, but it's how Dumbledore would say it. You really care about people. And I'm not trying to say it's easy for you -"

     "Yeah - no - it's hard but I make myself do it, and that in itself shows I'm a hero." Ginny had seen this trope enough in books and plays to fill in the blank. "But - but the other thing I said, about  _controlling_  people."

     "Look," said Harry, "I don't know the full situation. But I know that sometimes you have to make sacrifices for good. Sometimes you can't save everyone. But you're good at this. So as long as you decide as best you can, there's no reason to feel guilty."

     Ginny's eyes were closed. She was forcing herself to concentrate on his words, not just his voice. It really was so nice to be here for real... and she wanted so much to just believe whatever he said, but she had to use her better judgment... lives depended on that.

     "And the demon person," Harry said. "It's just the same kind of sacrifice. Ruby led you to that demon, right? So it must have needed killing. Whether it was really a monster or not, you had to save those people. She wouldn't have led you there otherwise."

     It seemed to make sense? She was so tired... she worried she wasn't thinking as well as she could. But Harry was still talking.

     "You know..." he said, "Dumbledore told me last year that I use 'love' kind of like a shield. My mum's love, when she died... it became a shield for me. And that's a lot of why I can stand up to Dark things. So I think... the power you bought with your contract is the same kind, since you use it to save people, it's  _love,_  except you use it to destroy, you use it as a sword."

     "I don't wanna destroy things."

     "But it's good! You do it to save people! Some things in life need to be destroyed. Ginny, everything you're doing is good. I know it. I know you're good."

     She was crying again. Just a little. She didn't want him to notice, but she was getting his shirt wet.

     They stood there for some time, until they both ached to move and Ginny's tears had slipped out and away. She lifted her head up and looked him straight in the face. There was his scar. There were his eyes. He really cared about her. He really understood at least a little of what was happening. She was so lucky... what an absurd thought, but she was so, so lucky...

     ...to have him.

     And then she remembered the other thing.

     And every part of her screamed a simultaneous  _NO_  and shoved it away, down down down, that  _other thing_ , that thing she absolutely had to say which would ruin everything, everything. Like a tiny illness, a bad seed, she had to get it away from her mind, she had to push it through her body, and now that shard of blackness chinked against her soul gem's glass and a tiny crack was born. The part of her mind that justified things was saying  _it's for the best, if you ruin everything you'll never fight again, and people are dying,_  and if she could allow that piece of black to be in her heart she could lose the  _rest_  of the black, and didn't he just say to make sacrifices?

     It was okay.

     They were together.

     And she didn't tell him what her wish had been.

     Harry took a deep breath, which she felt in his chest. "I didn't know bad things were happening," he said. Then he blushed. "Sorry, that sounded dumb."

     "I didn't tell you bad things were happening," said Ginny. "Until now."

     "You're way stronger than I realized," said Harry. "You're amazing."

     "Thanks," murmured Ginny.

     Harry frowned. "Now I feel kind of sexist. Sorry."

     "It's okay," said Ginny.

     They fell asleep on the couch together.


	4. Rule Number 3: Never wear your heart on your sleeve, unless you wanna taste defeat.

     Some part of it was reasonable, coming from the conceptual assurance that her work wasn't going in the wrong direction, and some part of it was emotional, coming from the simple presence and contact with the hot skin of someone who cared. It was her mind and her heart working in equal parts, the neural electricity leaping on and on and on and never giving up, that let the orange seep back into the soul gem, like the blood returning to a not-quite frostbitten limb. Soon, they would be back to business as usual. And that was how the Hero of Destruction was saved by the Hero of Protection.

     She would never know how close she had to come to splitting open and having the contents of her head splattered about the area, not as blood and gore, but translated into something even less palatable: the truth of the inside of her mind.

     This happens sometimes. Splitting open. We walk past people who have burst without even realizing. It may be due to a constant grinding down performed by the world on some people more than others, or it may have to do with the awful knots into which we tie our thinking. Often it is the simple result of one other person's ignorant or selfish act. And sometimes, it's because of an alien cat thing.

     Snow fell.

     A girl waded through dunes of - no, actually, it wasn't snow. It was... Salt? Sugar? She wasn't going to taste it.

     One night, before the end of summer but after going to see Harry, as Ginny was just getting into bed, Ruby had said something important. Another of those things that Ginny should have known, or  _could_  have, but hadn't thought of until Ruby said it.

     "Ginny Weasley must not return to Hogwarts."

     This labyrinth was very blank. It was rendered in what seemed to be a limited palette: the parts that weren't black-white-grey were in one of maybe three shades of yellow. There were twisty, tall, flat but irregular yellow walls that would probably present quite a mind-blowing maze if she tried to get anywhere within them. The horizon was filled with the walls and the ground was covered with white sparkly powder, an incredible amount. The girl didn't seem to care much about the incredible aspects of her surroundings. Her movements were decisive and her gaze was cold (no wonder it had seemed to be snowing).

     "You're rather boring, as they come, aren't you," she said.

     As if in response, a nearly-invisible specter loomed over her shoulder. She elbowed it in its bandaged face and it spurted blood.

     Ginny had stared at Ruby for a second, and then said, "what?"

     "Well, what did you expect?" Ruby had mewed. "You were planning to head back into safety? Leave the slaying to someone else for a couple few months?"

     Ginny had stammered something, words running ahead of her thoughts.

     "I suppose it's your choice," said Ruby. "You could get on the train." Then she had padded out of the room.

     The specters were swarming, though it was hard on the eyes to make out where they were. They were practically outlines, especially against the white sand, and just to make it more unnerving they were whispering. The girl shot spells. Some went through, but some blasted, burnt, sliced the ghosts, knocking them out of formation, sending their sheetlike corpses to the ground. "Ah, ah!" they murmured. A specter got behind the girl and slashed across her back, ripping her shirt, before she smashed its head with a bat that she momentarily projected from her wand. Blood was staining the powder everywhere. She wouldn't have expected them to bleed. She also wouldn't have expected their jagged, grinning teeth to be knocked out and lie there on the ground, not fading away or anything. Specters flew toward her and tried to bite, punch, rip, tear her and she ripped and tore them apart before they could, her feet sinking into the sand as she stepped, her arms and wand charged with magic.

     Ginny had sat and stared at the metaphorical book that contained Hogwarts. It had burst into flames. Ink was dripping out like blood, staining the metaphor. She wasn't going back. She was doing  _this_  forever. She threw the covers off the bed.

     "Ruby, let's go kill a demon," she said, following her into the hallway. Her voice hit a strange and nasty pitch.

     "I didn't have one planned," Ruby said.

     "There's got to be one around. Let's get it done with."

     The air outside was night-cold, but Ginny may have actually been colder. In a mercifully disconnected state she clicked together the last of the pieces, what she really had to do. Amber liquid sloshed about her soul gem as frost gathered on the glass. She'd been tired before, but then she'd been hit by a bolt of clarity and it had picked her right up. The way ahead was as clear as the shimmering blue line of a tracking spell.

     White powder sprayed into the air as a body hit. "Are there really still more of you?" the girl sneered. Ghosts kept darting forward, being cut down.  _"Confringo,_ " she cast.  _"Deprimo._ Don't tell me I need to break the ghost-generator, or something?" It was practically rhythmical. If the sounds it made weren't so gross, it could be a song. "Ah, ah!" the ghosts chorused. Confringo, Reducto, Confringo, Reducto. heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat.  _Dance with me._

     The girl cartwheeled across the sand, her sharp heel coming down in a specter's tail. She stretched out both arms and blasted a ghost in each cardinal direction. Oh, she loved being powerful, as much as the rest of it was a nightmare. Not all ice will shatter with a tiny blow; sometimes it's just too thick.  _Take my hand._  The girl swung her ephemeral magic bat, getting caught up in the carnage. Left, right, left, right - the ghosts were like notes in a music game, coming towards her to the beat. She reached and grabbed a head and brought it down on her knee.  _Now give me a twirl._  And she spun, sparkling in her dress, looking amazing.  _I love this game!_  The voice was high-pitched with joy. The girl was holding the voice's hand, they were stepping and turning, she leaned her out and reeled her in and watched her short white hair swish. The italic words conveyed a smile. Then the beat changed, and it was sort of a waltz, or something. The two of them were close together, slowly turning in a circle, and the girl was shorter. Her eyes were on level with the almost invisible shoulder. A thousand leaves were falling around them. She could almost believe they were in a dance hall amid other pairs, with music sweetening the air.

     Ginny's final realization was her responsibility.

     The job laid out in her contract was her own mission now. The criterion for success was not Ruby leading her home after the battle. It was the demon being  _dead._  It was the world being that much safer. And the ultimate success would be when the word  _dead_  described every single demon.

     Then she could go back to Hogwarts. Or if she was too old, or something, she could anyway go back to normality. It would be over. She had to  _make_  it over, herself. That was the final piece. She couldn't wait for it to end. She had to finish it. And so the way ahead was clear, as clear as the bright green bolt of a different kind of spell.

      _You're sharp,_  the voice said.  _I like it._

     The dance continued. The two bodies fit together, not by contour, but by their relative positions, close together or not. They moved in sync. The girl was caught in the necessity of motion, the action that was demanded by her transparent partner's. To break the pattern was unacceptable. It wouldn't be beautiful. You might as well fail to take up arms in a fight. If she brought your hand over you in that certain, smooth motion, you didn't  _not_  twirl. And when her foot moved backward yours moved forward opposite, and she controlled you just by creating a void.

      _I'm so glad you came to see me!_

     (But there was an impulse moving on and on and on, jumping the gap between myelin coverings on axons in the brain,)

      _You're not like the other ones._

     (then over the greater gap and crackling through the soul gem,)

      _Do you like chocolate?_

     (and "you are a sword" Harry had said,)

     And Ginny wrenched herself out of the rhythm and snapped the demon's wrist with a hard twist of her hand, then she pushed her to the glossy wooden dance floor.

     A transparent shape fluffed down onto the hills of white powder. Ginny couldn't make out its outlines very well; it had parts like a human girl, and parts like a specter, and parts she didn't really understand, couldn't really process, not with the image so hard to focus on.

     "Glad that's over," said Ginny dispassionately. "You had me going for a bit. But we're done."

     The demon was saying more things in italics, but Ginny pushed them out. She took her wand in her hand; it seemed that during the dance it had vanished just like her soul gem could, and now she took it back.

     "Final shot," Ginny whispered to herself.

     Then she pointed her wand at the demon, smiling the coldest smile she'd ever known to inhabit a face. Because she was going back to Hogwarts, finally. It wasn't going to happen soon - but it was going to happen ever. She knew where she was now; she knew just how to get where she wanted. And if Apparating there took a hundred years and squeezed her infinitely thin all the while, she at least would appear there in the end, popping out of thin air, like the god d*** magical girl she was.

     And  _this_  thing was what stood in her way. She very deliberately let that thought course out of her mind, let it slide down under her shirt, across her body, over her arm, and then into her wand as she thought, _this is the way I should have done it all along._

      _"A**** K******."_

     She spoke the Killing Curse. Then she exploded.

* * *

_And Ruby, far away and sitting atop a great crane, for it is sometimes the Incubator way to shout crucial facts from a high place to no listener in particular - Ruby said: "Girls, you do whatever it takes to keep your heart from breaking in two. But sometimes there just isn't a way..."_


	5. Rule Number 4: You gotta be looking pure.

  * **Half One**



     Not all ice will shatter with a tiny blow; sometimes it takes a very  _large_  blow.

      _Oh,_  thought Ginny.  _We're doing this again._

     She meant dying.

     She'd gone farther along than ever this time. Ginny thought her body was probably all gone. She was here floating inside her soul gem, and strips and bits of her double witch outfit were crackling in and out of existence indecisively.

     Ginny amended that thought, the one about being all gone - her head must be more or less alright somewhere, because she was thinking, and her mind wasn't  _all_  in her soul gem. Just some important little piece.

     How about her body? She was pretty sure she had exploded. The bolt of green had hit, and blasted backward. So clearly, she should have died. But she was a double witch. She wasn't normal. Ruby had changed her. Maybe...

     She didn't have enough human left in her to die?

     Harry cared about her. Whatever she'd truly turned into, it was something he recognized as good.  _Harry Potter_  recognized her as good. And that had to count for something, didn't it?

     And she looked around at the inside of her gem, the weightless space...

     And it seemed that all of it was orange. Just like her hair. Just like her magic.

     And that had to count for something, didn't it?

     Subsequently, Ginny ceased to exist.

     The body she had inhabited lay in several pieces in the paradoxical nonspace of a demon's labyrinth. The head hadn't finished bleeding, but the neurons had finished firing. When the demon moved on, it would leave the corpse behind, along with the empty glass gemstone lying nearby. Maybe someone would find that and use it as jewelry.

     The night was cold. Everything was broken.

* * *

  * **Half Two**



     She lay facedown, listening to the silence. She was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. She was not perfectly sure that she was there herself.

     Then she realized that was a silly thought, and sat up.

     The area was white, all white, and apart from a featureless ground it was all mist. That mist, she could tell, was substance that didn't yet have form; a concept that was somewhat familiar to her.

     She was naked, but she was just as familiar with willing clothes out of nothing, which she did. She did it mostly unconsciously, and afterward found she was wearing a strange mixture of her double witch outfit and her regular robes.

     On the ground by her feet, she noticed tiles. The grooves between tiles were beginning to appear and spread. That meant this world was slowly taking form. She looked around, but nothing was clear yet. Somewhere, she could hear water dripping. Curiouser and curiouser.

     "Hey-o!" said a chipper voice behind her.

     A girl her age. A pale, heavy face, and magically styled white-blonde hair. A fancy dress and a soul gem.

     Ginny: "You're a..."

     "Double witch."

     Ginny: "Like me."

     "Oh, but you're only half of one. So does that make you a single witch?  _Ha-ha!"_

     Her laugh was bright and cute.  _This type of character is who everyone loves,_  Ginny thought, and then she registered what the girl was actually laughing about.

     "I'm a what?" she asked.

     "Pleased to meet you,  _a what,_ " the girl cackled adorably. "I'm Electra Riddle. But these days, people call me The Law of Separation."

     "I have no idea what that means," said Ginny. She hadn't been concerned with it until now, but she thought maybe she should try and figure out what had gotten her here. What was the last thing she could remember?

     "Walk with me," said Electra, and pulled Ginny by the arm.

     Next to them, Ginny was starting to be able to make out a series of doors, possibly to cubicles or small hallways. Water was still dripping somewhere. "I knew a  _Tom_  Riddle," Ginny said absently.

     "Oh!" said Electra. "Was he a huge jacka**?"

     Ginny considered. "In retrospect, totally."

     "My brother!" Electra yelled. "I hope he didn't mess anything up too bad."

     Ginny stopped. They were in front of a series of sinks. She turned to Electra, confused.

     "You-Know-Who never had a sister. I would have heard."

     "Yeah, well," said Electra. "Everyone forgot."

     "What?"

     "Oh, just figure it out. The clues are all there!"

     "Okay, but... why don't you just tell me?" said Ginny, annoyed.

     "I can't just let you stick around here indefinitely!" said Electra. "You've got a train to catch." And then - she  _hissed._

     And Ginny  _knew_  where she was.

     Suddenly she couldn't breath. That dripping water was deafening, someone in the stall was moaning -

     "Don't," Ginny whispered as the sink behind her sank out of sight, grinding stone against stone.

     Then Electra reached out and pushed her, shoved her backwards, and behind her there was no wall or floor, there was emptiness, there was no stopping but only falling and she still couldn't breath, all the light was fading away and it was snowing, snowing sugar, she could see through herself and she was falling so far she didn't know how she could ever get out. Only was she even falling? Already every reference point was gone, no light or any feeling of motion, no breath in her lungs.  _Like an Inferius,_  she thought.  _I'm an animated corpse, and here come the Dark wizard's commands to fill my head._  And something did come, and it was -

**...Sugar Sugar dancing in the night all alone alone I hate it and he was glad it was for the best but she was here and magic like he used to and not a ducky but she killed me too and I guess was just the same monster only why does no one see that because they're not human I see it and I think it's the other**  help  **one who really controls but maybe they think I'm the monster and I just want the dance but he didn't anymore and it was better that way I remember and ducky thought I was a ghost**  help me  **but they never used to help me like**  I'm in here  **Sugar Sugar does and I can't eat that anymore? Just the people I guess only can't we dance instead but there has to be both so what's it even for? I think it's made to be cruel and someone likes that somewhere maybe it's me though because they kill me and why to do that and if I don't understand isn't it me who has a problem**  I'M NOT A DEMON  **only I just dance and no one ever said no not him love-love he liked it we used to but he ******I'M A WITCH said for the best and that was similar he could have been like them and killed me if he thought that but we danced and I liked it maybe he didn't really like it maybe that's the problem and he really ****_I'M_ **didn't like me and he made things this way and now I can't have the Sugar Sugar for he didn't like me to have it that must be it only I don't remember**   _STILL_   **the start of the thought so I'll start over? Only what's it for and I'm hungry and there's not people here so let's move the house and I wonder if we're out of the zone yet? Unless it moves**   _HERE!_   **with me because I think it maybe...**


	6. Omake: Alternate Endings

  * **The Worse Ending**



_"It's Ginny,"_  said nothing.

     Harry opened his eyes. All he could see in a sea of dark were little points of moonlight catching on the shinier books on his bookcase.

      _It's Ginny._  What was? Where? Huh? His head felt foggy. He was supposed to be sleeping, it was no time for riddles. He'd never been that good at them, anyway. But...  _Ginny._  Something related to her was probably important, and he realized he'd have to get up, and by the time he'd struggled out of the covers and gotten his bearings he had figured out that "It's Ginny" was the sort of thing Ginny would say to clarify who was calling on the phone... or, as wizards didn't have phones, maybe the sort of thing she would magically send to him to let him know she was there in person.

     Then he realized that was silly. But he'd gotten up and he had heard  _something,_  so he decided he'd better check.

     And the stairway was dark as he descended, and the small noises seemed loud...

     But scarier than the darkness was Ginny herself.

     She was a pale and soot-covered apparition, her nearly monochrome body standing out against her tangled but bright hair and blending in to the sitting room backdrop with its lights off and shapes reduced to outlines. This much in a single snapshot, but adding to the affect was her shaking, an involuntary movement, a bit too intense to be due to the cold, that both the rational and irrational parts of Harry knew meant something was very wrong. Then the apparition was swooping forward and a freezing hand covered Harry's cheek along with his eye, and pushed his nose a little bit uncomfortably, and then was withdrawn.

     Ginny sighed and fell into his arms, which he brought up to catch her just in time.

     Harry didn't know what to say. Her name leaked out of his mouth as a placeholder, but this situation was beyond him at 11:00 at night. He hardy remembered how to act around her. The silence coming from Harry's mouth felt like a poison, like he was filling the -  _her_ air with something deadly that must be broken with words, but words he did not have, because he hadn't been there fighting demons, and she was the hero this summer, not him, and being a double witch was something he didn't understand.  


     Ginny slumped lower in his arms.

     "Are you okay?" he said, instinctively, just to break the silence. She didn't respond.

     An item shaped a bit like an egg and made of black stained glass dropped and clinked on the carpet between them. Harry only had time to look at it, and then -

     and then and then and then and then and then and then then then AHHHHHHHH  


  
    it smashed to bit / they splashed away / head over heels over arms over knees over me under you into the ground the sky while metal twisted itself into the intricate designs of a grief seed and the oceans boiled and rivers bled / we auctioned off our memories / becoming DESPAIR and Harry was falling. He felt unbound by reality and it was terrifying, like a hundred times the first time you touched a ghost. ah, it's you in here / and i didn't even kiss you yet! A book broke his fall, one large enough to land on, and when he did, it gripped his bare feet, legs, palms, like peanut butter on your teeth. He struggled; he couldn't move.

      _"Accio wand!"_  


     It didn't work. He hadn't even brought his wand with him downstairs. And the images, the world around him was something that hurt his mind, jammed a knife through his retinas and somehow back through the optic nerve to get inside his brain, because it was impossible and also spinning and churning and unfurling, and it could only be described in thoughts that his brain wasn't built to have and they were going to break it and bend it out of shape, and Harry closed his eyes.

     no, you gotta open them, Ginny complained. It was like she was standing beside him, but on both sides, all sides, shifting around weirdly so his ears hurt as well, unless it wasn't actually his ears with which he heard her. The surface of the book was creeping into his skin and slowly making it go numb, and in a fit of panic Harry redoubled his efforts to pull free, straining and flailing his upper body, eyes still closed but he could feel the unthinkable stuff around him. An environment so unlike anything that you had to use words that didn't really describe it. A creature so alien, not just alien but  _opposite,_  irreconcilable to humans, that you had to call it what could never be its name. Trapped in a labyrinth, Harry was eaten by a demon.

     open your eyes, whispered Ginny, and he looked into the eyes of a basilisk.

 

  * **The Better Ending**



     "Final shot," Ginny whispered to herself.

     Then she pointed her wand at the demon, smiling the coldest smile she'd ever known to inhabit a face, and the labyrinth began to flood with pink light, sparkling off the white powder, giving the transparent demon substance.

     ...Wait, that wasn't from her.

     She swung her head up and there was a bubbly pattern of pink lines hanging in the air, it had just appeared, and it was hard to see behind it but she thought there was a pink archer stretching back a bowstring and then she

     SHOT---->

     And the ghostly demon split apart and faded away. And the pink energy swept past it and onward, swarming across the white powder and the yellow walls, eating them too, up and up over everything until it was all gone and they were in an alleyway and not in a labyrinth.

     The pink archer floated to the ground, and Ginny realized she was looking at another double witch, and one who was much, much cooler than herself.

     "Hey," the pink-themed girl said, although her words didn't seem to match the movement of her lips. "I'm destroying every demon, past, present and future, so you don't need to fight anymore."

  
     "That's similar to what I was doing," Ginny replied,  breathless.  


     "But I just became a god," said the pink girl, smiling. "So I'll take care of it."

* * *

     "I don't go looking for trouble," said Harry, nettled. "Trouble usually finds  _me."_  


     "How thick would Harry have to be, to go looking for a nutter who wants to kill him?" said Ron shakily.

     "I wouldn't worry about him," said Ginny. "After all, you have a double witch on your side."

     Harry smiled at her. "A single wizard like Black had better watch out, then."

     As the conversation turned to Sneakoscopes and the Hogsmeade trips and sneaking out of school, Ginny tuned out, because the moment was so perfect she didn't want to focus on any particular part of it. She would never again criticize a play for ending in a deus ex machina.

     Everything was just...  _okay,_  just like that. This couldn't be the real ending, she thought. This must be some sort of alternate ending. Since when does anything really end with "all was well"?

     She and Harry were holding hands. Ron was doing his best not to notice, while Hermione was all winks and expressive eyebrow movement. Professor R. J. Lupin was passed out on the far seat, making the occupation attribute of their compartment on the Hogwarts Express equal to five. At one point, they got to scare off Draco Malfoy when he arrived looking for trouble. Ginny's powers and the new teacher's presence both helped with this (and it might have deserved more airtime if this were a different type of story). A little while later, lanterns came on, because the night and the rain had stopped any light from getting in from outside.

     "We must be nearly there," said Ron, leaning forward to look past Professor Lupin at the now completely black window.

     The words had hardly left him when the train started to slow down.

     "Great," said Ron, getting up and walking carefully past Professor Lupin to try and see outside. "I'm starving. I want to get to the feast..."

     "We can't be there yet," said Hermione, checking her watch.

     "So why're we stopping?"

     The train was getting slower and slower. As the noise of the pistons fell away, the wind and rain sounded louder than ever against the windows.

     Harry, who was nearest the door, got up to look into the corridor. Ginny was getting up to join him, when the lanterns suddenly went out in unison and the font of visual information ceased entirely.

     There were sounds of scuffling as people tried to move, and trod on one another. Ginny didn't listen, because she could feel something and it was distracting her... she could  _sense_  a presence, so it was something double witch-related...

     And as it moved closer, slowly traveling down the train car, she felt more clearly, and as her chest started to get cold she knew it was -

      _a thing that creates despair, a thing built upon negative emotion._  


     She'd thought they were all gone.

     Behind her, a small light flared, allowing her to see, dimly, the sliding door to the train's hallway. She heard what must be Professor Lupin's voice, but she didn't turn to look. As the cold feeling intensified, she stared at the compartment door, wand in hand, and then something opened it.

     The towering cloaked figure captured all of her attention, as if it was casting a bright light that threw everyone behind her into her own deep shadow, even though in terms of actual photons quite the opposite was happening. It drifted forwards...

     And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it were trying to suck something more than air from its surroundings.

     "Sorry, but, um, is that  _all?"_  asked Ginny, almost reproachfully. The cloaked thing paused, confused.

     "I mean, I'm sure you're scary enough to most people, but couldn't you have worked up something more for the double witch? Cloaks, yeah, creepy. Darkness... well, the cold was a nice touch, but honestly -"

     And then, without anyone so much as seeing her cast, there were purple ropes stretching from Ginny's wand to a place just inside the creature's hood.

     "- I've seen  _much_  worse."

     As if anticipating Ginny's next move, the hoarse, adult voice behind her said, "Don't destroy it."

     Ginny didn't turn to look at him (as confident in this battle as she was, it still wouldn't do to risk it).

     "This is a Dementor, and it works for the Ministry," Lupin explained. "Or is controlled by the Ministry, anyway. It's checking the train for the escaped prisoner. Just tell it to leave."

     "Alright," said Ginny. "Leave."

     The Dementor did, and they could tell by the stretching and direction of the purple magic ropes (until they snapped), and she could tell by her sense of its coldness, that it was continuing down the train toward the exit.

     Once upon a time, a double witch returned to Hogwarts.

 

  * **...that's how I originally thought it would go, but then I remembered exactly how Dementors work...**



     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

      _A thing that creates despair, a thing built upon negative emotion..._  


     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

  
_The towering cloaked figure captured all of her attention._ It drifted forwards...  


     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

* * *

     A thermometer is an instrument for measuring temperature (not to be confused with a thaumometer, which measures magic). It operates on the principle that liquids take up more space when hot, and less space when cold.

     A thermometer consists of a liquid, usually mercury, inside a thin vertical plastic tube with numbered markings all along the side. As increasing temperature makes the liquid expand, its level in the tube rises, and vice versa, so we can communicate the temperature of our surroundings based on which mark the mercury has reached.

     One obvious flaw of this type of thermometer (obvious, at least, if you live somewhere hot) is that extreme temperatures are liable to expand the mercury past the tube's capacity, causing it to burst and splatter everywhere, and cleaning up mercury is the last thing you want to do on an already sweltering day.

* * *

     And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it were trying to suck something more than air from its surroundings. But in those last moments of coherence, it struck Ginny that it hadn't  _taken_  anything, as sucking usually implied, but rather  _given_  -

      _sugar sugar blood swing splatter freezing dancing burning tasting blood sugar wolves save them them them GOP kill them upside-down spinning jump unusual GOP unusual GOP unusual burning 451 gears crunch Harry GOP falling shaking help save save save sleep honey climbing falling blood ah ah falling asleep and dying if you can't see where it keeps its brain_ and she was so COLD. So cold she couldn't feel, she could only think and every demon was slamming into her thoughts and so was everything in between the demons because it was all so COLD like a hundred times the first time you touched a ghost, and it was all she could remember and she wanted to knock herself unconscious so she could STOP but that would only turn it into dreams so she wanted to  _die_  because she  _couldn't handle it all at once_ , she couldn't handle it not being over, all she could respond with was a screeching feeling of "UNACCEPTABLE" with no idea how to stop accepting it and if anyone had looked at her soul gem it would have filled with black at literally record speed and then smashed open and spilled black out because the despair was over capacity, but nobody was going to be cleaning up Ginny on such a freezing day. And then the inky mess was all over her forehead, near the brain's frontal lobe, sliding down her face as her body flopped onto the floor and her mind exploded outward into a - a - a  _demon_ but then suddenly the pink girl was there, shining like hope itself, "Don't worry, I won't let you -"

 

  * **The Worst Ending**



     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

      _A thing that creates despair, a thing built upon negative emotion..._  


     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

  
_The towering cloaked figure captured all of her attention._ It drifted forwards...  


     heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat

* * *

     Flowers swayed in the breeze, and the airships flew over the city.

     "I have the weirdest feeling," Madoka said (in Japanese), "as if... I'm needed."

     Homura gave her a small smile. "Of course you're needed."

     "No," said Madoka, "I mean like... somewhere else?"

* * *

     Then her soul gem reached capacity and burst. And Ginny's body flopped onto the floor and her mind exploded outward into a seething mass of    
_unacceptable_   
 that ripped, metal screeching, through the walls and ceiling of the train car.

     Once upon a time, nobody arrived at Hogwarts.

     The Hogwarts Express never reached the station at Hogsmeade.

     Aurors would find it draped sideways across the ground, curving haphazardly in a mockery of the train tracks' straightness, and several parts of it torn and twisted in ways that looked as powerful as, but somehow more  _wrong_  than, what a dragon could do. They would find parts of it drenched in a sticky orange fluid. They would find the sweets trolley knocked over in the front of the train, and Neville's toad hopping away across the empty, grassy field on the tracks' North side. They would find no people.

 

  * **...that's how I originally thought those would go, but then I remembered exactly how Madoka's wish works...**



     "Final shot," Ginny whispered to herself.

     Then she pointed her wand at the demon, smiling the coldest smile she'd ever known to inhabit a face, and the labyrinth began to flood with pink light, sparkling off the white powder, giving the transparent demon substance.

     ...Wait, that wasn't from her.

     She swung her head up and there was a bubbly pattern of pink lines hanging in the air, it had just appeared, and it was hard to see behind it but she thought there was a pink archer stretching back a bowstring -

* * *

     Then she pointed her wand at the - the - the girl, the woman actually, a young woman with short white hair and black-striped sleeves...

     "Who are you?" Ginny asked the woman, who was kneeling on the yellow stone ground in the alleyway and looking down. Ginny was receiving a strong feeling of danger from her presence, although she wasn't sure...

     Wasn't sure... what she was  _doing_  here...

     A pink light spread across the yellow brick walls, the colors mixing oddly, and the light's source was an Asian girl clad in a pink outfit that could have come from the same designer as Ginny's orange one. She seemed not to have come from anywhere, but was there anyway, and her attention was focused on the young woman just as Ginny's wand remained pointed in that woman's direction. She said something in what Ginny thought was French.

     And the woman looked up, smiled a little, offered her hand and in it was -

      _Yep._  


_That was a soul gem._

     And as Ginny, disoriented, confused, said "Wait - okay - what? Who are you?", the pink girl was passing her hand over the soul gem, and it was disappearing, and as the pink girl turned to Ginny and answered, "Don't worry! We're just changing how things work a little," the woman was saying "Je suppose que c'est mieux de cette façon," and then crumpling to the ground as if she'd died, and as Ginny tried to question further, the pink girl was fading away -

* * *

     "Final Shot," Ginny whispered to herself, and then,  _"Diffindo!"_  she screamed and the spell cut the through the wraith's cloak and the substance within, causing it to wither and swirl into oblivion, and drop a single pink grief cube onto the ground.

     "And there we go," Ginny said confidently, walking away and leaving the cube to be gathered by Ruby.

     Once upon a time, a double witch continued to fight.


End file.
